b. pascuus is certainly a contender, and given the variation in boletes and the age of this specimen, I'd be prepared to accept b.subtomentosus or even b.reticulatus. But this still does not explain the branches at the top of the stipe, which brings me to Mac's ingenious solution..

No offence taken Mac, I can assure you there is no funny business going on. Take a close look at the pores and you can see several indentations left by the "branches" as the cap grew and rotated.

I regret not taking some better photo's but on the day I was fungus hunting I snapped about 30 different fungi and this one was so unusual that I thought it would be one of the easiest to identify. How wrong I was !

I'm assuning that your knowledge greatly exceeds mine (most people's do !), so your suggestion that I may have resorted to skullduggery tends to suggest this chap is indeed something very odd.

I'll return to the forest nexr month and do my best to track down another specimen - who knows I might get a toadstool named after me !

Well the foot of the fungus have been damaged and it also seems to be quite dry. Now if, when drying, the outer "skin" shrinks more than the inner "meat" does - guess what happens! (Or vice versa if the "meat" swells or grows more than then skin...) You often see effects of this kind in fungi - one part shrinks or expand and another doesn't: Older "individuals" have upturned rims of the caps - younger downturned, for instance. You have to fill in the blanks by yourself...

It was the leaf which threw me -- usually one would remove a leaf covering half the specimen if identification (and not journalistic integrity) was the intention. Having said that, you show better grace than I would at having an assumptive swipe taken at you, and no, I certainly doubt my knowledge exceeds yours in light of what Episcophagus has revealed about this little would-be Martian mushroom. My apologies and may you find many more unusual specimens in spite of the knee-jerk reactions of Macs everywhere.